When a coaxial cable is connected to a connector, two pins must be used. The first pin is tied to the signal wire, and the second pin is tied to the shield surrounding the signal wire. The shield pin is usually distributed to ground on the printed circuit board. Because two pins on the printed circuit board via connector are consumed by one coaxial wire, the amount of circuitry that can be linked from the printed circuit board to the system is severely limited. For example, a standard board has 44 pins, subtracting power and ground, the amount of signal wires that can go to the board is 42. If these signal wires need to be distributed through coaxial cable, the amount of signal wires that can go to the board is now 21. So now the printed circuit board is limited by the amount of coaxial wires that can go to it and not by the amount of circuitry that can be fit onto it.
Heretofore, the shields of a few coaxial cables were doubled or tripled up and then soldered to a grounding pin. Also, this approach for grounding a plurality of coaxial cables was awkward for the technicians who wired the system chassis and not reliable for integrity purposes.
The prior art patent literature shows various methods for grounding to a common board or chassis, and exemplary thereof is U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,433 to Carroll showing a grounding bar to which wires from each shield are soldered, requiring an added soldering step for each shield.